


The Alpaca Mission

by valantha



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canon-Atypical Sunburn, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Mission Fic, Philinda Undercover, Pre-Bahrain (Agents of SHIELD)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 10:02:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7680127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valantha/pseuds/valantha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alpacas are cute, but Melinda still hates undercover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Alpaca Mission

**Author's Note:**

> For day 4 of the [Philinda Undercover Challenge](http://fuckyeahphilinda.tumblr.com/post/147886723436/philinda-undercover-is-officially-a-go)
> 
> Beta'ed by the ever lovely xyber116

Melinda looked over the sere yet lovely desert landscape, felt the sun beat down upon her through the deep azure of the cloudless sky, and cursed Phil Coulson with every obscenity in her vocabulary. And she spoke nine different languages.

**Earlier**

Melinda was startled out of her Tai Chi routine by the ringing of her telephone. She glanced at her wall clock. It was 4:27 a.m.; who would be calling this early?

“Melinda May,” she tersely answered the phone.

“Ms. May, sorry to call you so early, but your specific skills are needed for an urgent mission. Can you be at HQ in 30?” a polite but firm female voice replied.

“Affirmative.” Melinda stripped off her damp workout clothes, took a sponge bath (who knew how long it would be until her next shower), dressed, and grabbed her overnight mission bag. She had one in her locker at work, but if she remembered correctly that one was almost out of personal supplies.

May scratched out a quick note and slid it under her two-doors-down neighbor’s door. The note simply said “Out at 4:36 a.m., Thanks.”

The door, or at least the condo beyond the door, was owned by Linda Brown, a nice older lady who also worked for S.H.I.E.L.D, in the HR department. Linda and Melinda had an understanding. Whenever Melinda had to disappear on short notice, Linda would look after her plants, get her mail, and toss any food that needed to be tossed. In return Melinda took Linda’s nieces flying when they came to visit.

Due to the almost complete lack of traffic, Melinda pulled into long-term parking at HQ by 4:49. She shouldered her bag and stopped off at the break room on her way to her handler’s favorite meeting room. Melinda didn’t need the tea she made, but she also grabbed some coffee she knew Phil would _need_.

As expected, Agent Walters was already there, looking harried with a ream of printouts strewn in front of her.

“Morning,” Melinda greeted her.

“Morning,” Agent Walters replied not looking up from her papers. “Phil should be here in 5, we’ll start the briefing then.”

May nodded and settled into her seat to wait.

When Phil arrived, still rather sleep-rumpled, May slid him the coffee she’d grabbed him. He gave her a grateful look, inhaled half of it in one gulp, and turned his attention to Agent Walters.

Walters began the briefing with some background on the Peruvian drug trade before moving onto more recent intel that suggested the Maggia were using an alpaca farm as front for smuggling cocaine and perhaps even Compound X95.

Melinda was to go in undercover as a buyer with Phil as her assistant/body guard and determine if it was only a cocaine operation, or if they were using the alpacas as literal drug mules for the unstable healing compound as well.

Melinda flipped through her cover. _Great_. Her cover was a large fiber mogul who was actually an up-and-coming drug lord who was actually an undercover agent for The Hand. Melinda hated uncover because it was so deceptive and she preferred straightforward solutions, and this was triply deceptive.

Agent Walters finished the briefing with her standard, “Wheels up in 30.”

Melinda and Phil nodded in synchrony. Phil made a beeline to the break room for more coffee and Melinda headed to her cubicle. She had an important call to make.

She dialed Andrew’s office number to leave a message, it wasn’t even 6:00 and she didn’t want to wake him.

“Sorry Andrew. Something came up,” it was an unsecure line so that was all Melinda could say, “I have to cancel our date tomorrow. I can’t make it. Okay. Have a good day. Bye.”

Melinda wiped her sweaty palms off on her business pants. She could stare down 7 armed Yakuza guards without breaking a sweat, but letting Andrew down was something completely different.

She pulled herself together and focused on preparing for the mission. She knew the mission outfitters would pack everything they thought she and Phil would need for the mission, but it was always better to be over-prepared than underprepared.

**8 hours later**

Melinda awoke to Phil shaking her shoulder. They had landed.

They each had their own flight ritual. If Melinda wasn’t in control of the aircraft, she liked to sleep. Even if she wasn’t tired, it was her way of preparing for the upcoming mission.

Phil liked to go over every detail of the mission with a fine-toothed comb, making sure he knew everything he had had clearance to know and all the possible contingencies, and snack. He swore that Calories eaten during missions didn’t count against his healthy eating plan.

Melinda knuckled the sleep from her eyes and gestured that Phil had some powdered sugar on his nose. As Phil cleaned himself off, Melinda headed to the cargo bay to change clothes and don her cover.

“I hate undercover,” Melinda exclaimed as she tried to zip up her skintight, slinky red dress. It was slit up to mid-calf so it wouldn’t be impossible to fight in, but it was certainly impractical. She was thankful they’d packed flashy red cowboy boots instead of heels.

“What? Check out this poncho!” Phil exclaimed, “Look, it even has little llamas.”

“Alpacas.”

“What?”

“They’re probably alpacas.”

“Right.”

Without another word, Phil helped her zip up and then added the last touches to his hilarious tourist ensemble – a Panama hat with red trim and Ray Bans.

Melinda sighed. Time to get this show on the road. They left the airport in character and switched taxis after a brief walk around San Martin Plaza.

By the time they reached the meet, Melinda had fully embraced her convoluted cover. She glared at Phil until he ran around the taxi and opened her door for her. Then she glared at him while he did (just to be perverse).

A taciturn young man who responded to neither English nor Spanish handed them a blue paper rose – the signal. He made them leave their bags (with their hidden sat comms) before waving them into a beat-up pick-up truck.

He drove them northeast for three hours, the roads getting worse and worse. Eventually they reached their destination, a sprawling ranch at the end of a long dust road, indicated only by one small scorched-wood sign reading _lana y carne de alpaca_ with a big arrow.

The young man grunt, indicating they had arrived. Melinda shared an amused look with Phil before he ran around the truck to open the door for her.

A wizened old woman waited for them on the porch of a weathered blue farmhouse with herb planters lining the walk.

In halting English the wizened yet cheerful old lady introduced herself as Marisol, the owner of the ranch.

Melinda introduced them in Spanish and Marisol gratefully switched languages.

After 10 minutes of pleasantries in which Marisol introduced their silent driver as her nephew, they got down to business.

Marisol talked for a full hour about the quality and benefits of alpaca fiber and the requirements and strengths of an alpaca herd. Melinda tried multiple times to lead the conversation to the “special merchandise” but Marisol steadfastly remained focused on the alpacas.

Melinda could tell Phil was getting frustrated standing silently without any progress being made, so she coughed lightly and then apologized, blaming the dusty roads.

Marisol immediately offered to make them some tea or bring them some water, which Melinda eagerly accepted.

As soon as the old lady – clearly a patsy for the real criminal mastermind – left the room Phil began, “I don’t think she knows about the smuggling operation. We need to talk to the real kingpin.”

Melinda nodded. “You might be right, but we’ve got to go softly.”

Phil agreed, but Marisol returned before they could talk anymore.

Marisol poured the tea – which tasted like grass clipping mixed with bitter applesauce – and as she began talking about alpaca fiber again Phil interrupted asking, “Could you have your nephew or someone show us the merchandise? My employer wants to see it for herself.”

For a brief moment something cold and fierce flashed in her eyes, but it disappeared so quickly Melinda wasn’t sure if she’d imagined it or not.

Marisol nodded smilingly and said, “Yes, yes. Finish your tea first.”

Melinda and Phil each made valiant efforts to drink the herbal tea and before too long they were in a different beat-up truck with a different, slightly more communicable nephew, Juan, headed on another dirt road to the mountain pastures.

Phil asked Juan about the special merchandise, and he nodded vigorously saying that they were on their way.

Melinda and Phil settled back and watched as they passed shrubs, grass, and alpacas.

Juan stopped the truck at the end of a twisted dirt road, high on a ridge. They hadn’t seen another living thing: alpaca, herding dog, or human for more than an hour.

“This can’t be the mountain pastures,” Phil stated the obvious.

“No,” Juan answered, “Tia Marisol wouldn’t trust you, ‘Steve’ with her least-favorite gelding let alone her secret business. If you two get out now, I won’t have to shoot you.”

He waved an old but well-maintained Browning rifle at them.

Melinda and Phil shared a look. She could disarm him and take him down, easily, but it might be a test.

“How much do you want?” Melinda began. “$10,000 U.S.? $50,000?”

Juan snorted. “You Americans don’t understand anything. Tia is the one being generous; I’d rather shoot you and leave you for the condors. They’re endangered you know.”

Melinda and Phil shared another look. If Melinda took action now it might make future SHIELD investigations much more difficult. They had kept an eye on the path and odometer. It would be a rough few days, but they could make it to the extraction point.

Melinda nodded and stepped out of the truck. Phil followed her. Juan tossed them a single half liter water bottle, not enough for an afternoon stroll let alone getting back to civilization, and drove off.

Melinda watched the truck’s dust trail and then looked over the sere yet lovely desert landscape, feeling the sun beat down upon her through the deep azure of the cloudless sky. She cursed Phil Coulson. Perhaps if he hadn’t been so impatient to see the “special merchandise” they wouldn’t be baking right now

Phil shrugged off the insults and pointed out a shaded nook in the rock below, “We can wait there until the sun goes down and it get cooler.”

Melinda nodded, still annoyed.

They sat/dozed in silence for hours, hiding from the wicked heat of the sun as best they could.

Melinda nudged Phil awake. The sun had gone down maybe 30 minutes ago and things were rapidly cooling off. Phil gave up his poncho so Melinda could protect her bare legs.

They walked roughly southwest, following the road for a while and cutting across the desert when it diverged too far from the star-indicated heading they were following. The sunbaked dirt wasn’t that much more difficult to walk on than the road, but they did have to keep an eye out for cacti, their long nasty spikes could go straight through their shoes.

After hours of walking in the frigid night, the sky began to lighten – predawn.

Phil led them downhill, off their southwestern path. When they reached the dry creek bed they shared the remainder of the water in the tiny bottle. Melinda began digging a hole. Phil set off to try to collect dew from the nearby cactus.

By dawn Melinda had dug three seep holes 100 meters away from one another in the creek bed and Phil had returned with a bottle of dew. They settled into a nearby cavelet, sipping the slightly salty water (Phil had used his shirt to mop up the dew) and waited for the day to pass.

After an eternity, night fell. Each seep hole had collected some water at the bottom, enough to partially quench their thirst and refill the tiny bottle.

They walked through the night again, walking through the edge of the alpaca farm. Under the cover of darkness they drank their fill from an alpaca trough and refilled the bottle. They kept walking.

Same as the day before, they spent the pre-dawn hours hunting for water and rested in the shade while the sun was up. Melinda hoped they’d reach a highway soon and be able to hitch a ride back to civilization the next day.

She was right. During the third night of walking they did hit a highway. They followed it south until a chicken-laden truck passed them. It stopped.

Phil and Melinda pretended to be lost, foolish tourists who had been mugged and didn’t know any Spanish, but gratefully accepted the farmer’s offer of a ride into town.

He was only going as far as Comas, but once there, they were able to borrow enough change from a bartender to make a quick call from a battered payphone. Melinda called S.H.I.E.L.D. while Phil flirted outrageously with the bartender. It worked though, the tender-hearted woman gave him an ice-cold Inca Kola and Melinda some water while they waited for extraction.

Melinda was still annoyed that the mission had gone FUBAR, but Phil had gotten badly sunburned during the ride on the chicken truck, so they were even.


End file.
